


In All Things, Courage. In All Things, Wisdom.

by CaptainConfused



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, F/M, Gift Fic, Post-Canon, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:20:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4576695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainConfused/pseuds/CaptainConfused
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ganondorf is sealed away. Link has been brought into the palace as the new Captain of the Guard. How well the arrangement will work is a matter of some debate. Zelda's point of view. Creative liberties taken with Impa as a character (i.e. Zelda needed a confidante). (Also Link and Zelda as ace, but there's no in-text discussion of the matter, so if it's an inaccurate tag and it bothers anyone, just let me know.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In All Things, Courage. In All Things, Wisdom.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a birthday request from and a birthday present for BETSY WHO IS A BEAUTIFUL PERSON WITH A BEAUTIFUL SOUL. As it is the only fan-fiction I have ever written, I will stick it here so that my account looks a little less sad.

“Pardon me, Your Majesty.”  
The princess glanced up from the parchment, shifting her attention, with some difficulty, from the letter at her wrist to the liveried servant rocking on his heels in the doorway. From his expression and the low angle of the sun through the uncurtained window, Zelda could guess easily enough the purpose for his visit.  
“Peace.” She set down the quill pen and, ignoring the audible sigh of relief from the messenger, pushed back her chair from the writing desk. “Please inform Impa of my whereabouts.”  
“Yes, Your Majesty. Thank you, Your Majesty.”

\----

_The captain is gone._ They spoke always as if afraid of her as-yet-unseen wrath, as if she were their headmaster and they were not guards but children. _We don’t know where he went, Princess._ For a man who had been a wolf – an animal of the pack – he had a pronounced tendency to wander off alone.  
Every soul at Hyrule Castle knew the captain vanished at least once every seven days, but only three knew where he went: Zelda, Impa, and the man himself. Impa knew everything, of course, but Zelda had weighed the certitudes and the possibilities and, from there, had made an educated (and ultimately) accurate guess as to her captain’s secret pastime.  
Zora’s Domain may have had the most elegant water features, from waterfalls as thin and gossamer as silk to pools with a crystalline glow, but the captain, her captain, had been grown in a forest, with heart and home carved from loam and living wood. From a forest he’d emerged and to a forest he’d return. This was a sanctuary, as heavy and calm in its holiness as the Temple of Time housed deeper in the forest.  
When the footing became too uneven for a castle-bred courser, Zelda dismounted and picked her way carefully over rock and root. Her mount followed with ears upright and relaxed; they had walked this ground before, but even so, after the daily tumult of politics, the princess could not help but slow her pace still further. The birds in Faron’s Province sang here with a richer cadence than those in the castle gardens ever did.  
At the heart of the woods, she found him. He had left his boots and chainmail in the grass and stood instead in the green-edged white tunic of the guards, its sleeves pushed to his elbows, his hands and wrists bare. The waters of the spring, gold with the sunset, swirled in lazy, calf-deep waves, soaking the trousers he’d carefully rolled to his knees.  
His reason for disappearing stood beside him, her coat beaded with sunlit water, the white of her mane as bright as new starlight. Her saddle had been discarded with the chainmail, and her rider ran his hands along her shoulders while she tried to scratch her forehead against his knee.  
In the sliver of time before she was noticed, Zelda stole what observations she could: the ease of his pose, the creases gone from between oft-creased eyebrows, the cheerful tilt to his mouth so seldom seen at the castle. His sharp features softened with an affection he seemed to reserve for only animals: the stray cats behind the castle kitchen, the dogs of visiting diplomats, and every horse in the royal stables. Epona, of course, without question, he adored most of all.  
Zelda fastened her own horse’s reins to a low branch and settled herself carefully between the huge, curved roots of the same tree. Past visits had worn the rough bark smooth against her shoulders, but she moved slowly all the same, mindful of any new, eight-legged tenants who had appeared in the gap between her last visit and this one.  
Though her movements were slow and the waning day drew ever closer to twilight, her captain caught the shift in the growing shadows, and he turned with a steadiness that betrayed his lack of surprise. The first time he’d noticed her presence, all those months ago, he had appeared sheepish but unapologetic, a scolded child unrepentant of what he’d done. In the last few weeks, after the habit of her visit became commonplace, there was, now, hardly a shift in his smile as he transferred his attentions from Epona to her.  
Such was the pattern: her captain’s retreat, her leisurely pursuit, her appearance a forewarning of Impa’s impending arrival. Impa’s admonishments were gentler in the presence of the princess, and Zelda could, at the very least, give her captain a chance to finish his work before the rigid bodyguard swept in.  
With her silent message delivered, then, Zelda sat in peace, her legs tucked beneath her as she watched her captain finish his work. Epona, finding her first scratching post wanting, had butted her head against Link’s chest instead, and the Hylian was struggling to both keep his balance and placate the horse.  
Ah, yes. Zelda tucked a smile behind the curve of her fingers. This was sanctuary indeed.

\----

“This is not where he belongs.”  
Zelda did not need to see Impa to know that the Sheikah’s arms were crossed; her feet planted wide; her mouth a thin, downturned line. Most mistook Impa’s stoicism for annoyance, but Zelda, even as a child, had seen concern, never anger, in the bodyguard’s red eyes.

The woman’s blunt assessment, as was frequently the case, mirrored Zelda’s own, though the princess would not have chosen words so unforgiving.  
In the courtyard below, framed by the glass of the window, the captain and his new recruits struggled to understand each other. This day, as every day, Link faltered in his lessons, visibly at a loss to explain the movements that, in him, looked to be as natural as breath itself. He could demonstrate a sidestep – a roll – a twisting attack to the spine of the practice dummy, but in breaking down the pieces, the corner of his mouth crooked downward and his forehead creased. He rolled onto his toes, then back, trying to ghost through the separate components of the attack while his recruits waited, the lot of them gathered in a tight, nervous knot.  
The battles against Zant, against Ganondorf, had left few alive among the royal command. This new captain was young, his recruits younger still, and while Link was a gifted student (someone, after all, had taught him, and the lessons had been received well), his strength was not in teaching.  
She could see his mouth moving, his hesitant manner one she could decode but not hear. The sword tilted in his hand – his left hand; most of the recruits carried theirs in their right, and the translation of one stance to its mirror was perhaps one of the day’s complications.  
_This is not where he belongs._  
Seemingly by accident, the captain’s gaze tripped up to her window, and his shoulders hiked like those of a startled cat. Color rose to his cheek, flushing him pink, and he clamped his mouth shut, the lines of his jaw rigid and tight. Even after he dropped his gaze and turned back to his students to demonstrate the maneuver again, his movements were wooden.  
_This is not where he belongs._

\----

She did not know if they were nightmares or fragmented memories from before her Twilight imprisonment, but they festered in her dreams all the same. Spiders in the throne room. Legs like spindles, markings like blood, battle cries like a hunting horn. Her guards dangling in their grasp, limp and lifeless or choking on a last gasp. The last of them no longer fought for the kingdom; they fought to breathe.  
_Surrender or die_ – and she woke at midnight with a shudder, ice in her veins, palms tingling with a rush of useless adrenaline. Surrender – she chose surrender – would choose it every time – but for a heartbeat, lurching upright out of bed, she wanted to lash out at the shadows in her room, to destroy, to obliterate the invaders until they dragged her life from her.  
“Surrender or die,” he’d said, his voice raspy and metallic from behind his mask, and a frisson of panic sent a wave of cold through her chest. No – he was gone. Ganondorf was gone. The spiders were gone. The choice was not one she would have to make a second time.  
She knew better than to hide in her room when her thoughts remained trapped in the throne room and the aftermath. As with most difficulties, fear shrank only when confronted directly.  
Though armor was what she wanted to wear, Zelda took instead the cloak from her imprisonment and draped it over her nightdress. Even if she was to have only stars for company, she wanted a carapace.

\----

Moonlight filtered through the stained glass windows set high in the domed ceiling. The white and grey marble of the floor was splashed with pockets of silver, and the long strip of velvet carpet, even in the faint illumination of midnight, glowed as rich a blue as the sea.  
Most of the damage inflicted upon the palace had been repaired. The pillars smashed by Ganon had been rebuilt in stone less weathered than that of the floor and existing supports. The black cloud of dust and grit that followed his confrontation with Midna had been meticulously cleared away. Broken statuary had been removed but not yet replaced – the only remaining scar from a time before their present peace.  
No spiders. No Zant. No Ganondorf. She skirted the edges of the room, walking through pools of shadow that held nothing more dangerous than dust. Whatever her lingering nerves claimed, the war was over. The fighting was over.  
A soft, exhaled breath startled her out of her reverie, and she twisted in search of the source, tensing for a confrontation even as she recognized the familiarity of the sound.  
He sat cross-legged on the floor, his back against the wall and his hands folded in his lap. While he looked across the room rather than at her, the same tension that plagued him during his training session plagued him now, and the sigh, Zelda realized, had been for her benefit: she would have stumbled into him, unawares, in a matter of steps.  
Though company seemed out of place when she was so unsettled, she did not question for a moment the hero’s right to be there: though his battles had ranged all across Hyrule, the last of them, like hers, had begun here.  
Carefully, expecting a protestation, she settled onto the stone beside him, but with another sigh, this one softer still, almost a whisper, he relaxed.  
For a long time, they sat together, wrapped in private thoughts, his shoulder a phantom warmth against her own. Eventually, the captain’s breathing grew so slow and steady that Zelda couldn’t be sure he hadn’t fallen asleep. She hadn’t noticed before, but he wasn’t dressed for slumber, only for idleness: the cotton tunic from beneath his chainmail, as at the spring, and calf-length cotton pants, and bare feet. Did nightmares assail him, too?  
As vivid as the death of her kingdom had been, vivid too were the last hours of its rescue. _Lend us the last of your power,_ she’d asked, and he had. They had asked so much of him, and he had asked for nothing back. They had cut the dark lord down from his steed together, her with arrows, he with sword, but everything before and after had been done by the hero alone. Alone, pushed along by others’ motives and hopes and expectations.  
She knew what to expect from his swordsmanship, and she knew what to expect from him as the chosen hero, but what else? The rest of him was a soft-spoken mystery. How strange – to learn the dimensions of someone in war, only to relearn them in peace.  
With a brush of her hand down the worn shoulder of her cloak, she at last broke the silence: “Were you afraid?”  
Another long silence stretched between, and then, quietly, “Sometimes.”  
As always, his voice surprised her. He could be fierce, but he did not speak in a growl.  
“But you kept going.”  
“I did.” His words were measured, slow, everything weighed and considered before being spoken. “I knew what would happen if I didn’t.”  
That was the mark of courage, of course. To push back against the onslaught of fear. To find something to fight for even when all other thoughts turned toward giving up. She should have anticipated such an answer from him of all her subjects.  
“You are a warrior,” she began, matching the slow, careful pace of his speech, “but foremost, you are a man of peace. Is it cruel of me to keep you in preparation for a war that may never come?”  
He said nothing, but as she studied him, he adopted the frown that steepled his eyebrows so sharply. Did he resent her decision, or was he only considering the question?  
When still he said nothing, she continued: “I had intended to reward you for what you’ve done. To allay what you’ve suffered. But if I acted rashly – if this is not the path you want--”  
“I want to stay.”  
There had been no change in his posture, in his expression, but the words rang in the empty room with a force Zelda had not expected.  
“To what end?” she asked, mindful of his vehemence.  
“My life is yours.”  
Such statements were fundamentally nothing new. Knights had been swearing fealty to her with those words since she was ten years old. Even Impa, more friend than bodyguard, parroted the phrase in her more ceremonial moods.  
But “My life is yours,” low and heartfelt, more a secret than an oath – this ground was unfamiliar and, inextricably, dangerous.  
“Hyrule and its crown thank you for your devotion.”  
“Not to Hyrule,” he protested. His gaze remained riveted on his folded hands; even in the moonlight, Zelda could see his ears turning red. “To you.”  
“The kingdom and I are one and the same.”  
A shrug: a fabric rasp against her shoulder, a gentle disagreement, but he said nothing more.

\----

“I beg your pardon, Your Majesty.”  
Expecting the interruption, Zelda had already set aside not parchment this time, but the thin, rune-carved metal plate sent by the Gorons. Darbus and his pleasantries would have to wait for a reply, though the transcribing of one would take little time at all: most of their back-and-forth messages were, as with the Zora, hemmed in by the boundaries of tradition.  
She rose and acknowledged, with a nod, the soldier fidgeting in her doorway. “Please,” she began, as always, “inform Impa of my whereabouts.”  
“Yes, Your Majesty. Thank you, Your Majesty.”

\----

_Esteemed Patriarch Darbus,_ she began, nudging her mount into a canter. _Had I the opportunity to write to you freely and without formality, you would at once know of our present state of affairs, in a detail you would find too forthcoming given that we have so recently emerged from a time of war. A war against darkness, certainly, and not against one another, but diplomacy dictates nothing if not caution._  
As she entered Faron Woods, the air thickened with the presence of moss and leaf mold. An evening breeze brushed through the canopy, rustling the leaves in a prolonged whisper. The canter she reined in to a trot, then a walk. _In truth, the kingdom recovers far more quickly than I, and my people seem to have put their Twilight imprisonments behind them. How do you fare? I know only in theory what the dark power of the Fused Shadows can do to a host not of the Twilight Realm. Your pride and short temper are legendary, and as such, I suspect the elders of your council are more often in charge of your correspondence. I desire to speak to you to understand more fully your experience with the Shadow._  
None of this, of course, is fit discussion for an official letter of correspondence. The princess dismounted and led the way on foot, boots crunching through the scatter of leaves and twigs. In a childhood long ago, she had learned that trousers, while less regal, made rough terrain far more navigable than palace gowns. _Expect the usual miasma of pleasantries and unsaid truths in my next letter. Yours in Friendship and Compassion, Her Majesty Queen Zelda of Hyrule._  
The spring slipped into focus beneath the arcing trees, and Zelda stopped mid-step, surprise lancing through her bloodstream.  
Link wasn’t there – not in the water. He stood among the trees at the opposite side of the clearing, Epona’s reins in his hand, and while his presence would have been ease enough after the initial shock of his absence, he was not dressed in the raiments of the palace.  
He was dressed in green.  
He was dressed to leave.  
_I want to stay._  
Disappointment caught in her throat. She had failed him. The one Hyrulian who deserved whatever happiness she could grant him was not at peace in her service. She had made his life more difficult. In pursuit of his best interest, she had wedged him into a role he could not take. She had _failed_ him.  
What words – what apology – would suffice? She drew in a breath to speak and found words themselves inadequate. He had lent them his strength, had stopped the unraveling of Hyrule and all it contained, had risked death and worse to return the world’s balance. No speech could convey gratitude enough, apology enough.  
“Princess.” His low voice cut through her tumult. Slow, measured, exact: “I want to show you something.”  
“What?” No, that was too curt a response, far too sharp. _Breathe, slow down, speak with care._ “Is something wrong?”  
From the mild frown that crossed his face, she could assume the question confused him. She was wrong, then: he was not leaving. Her reaction was unwarranted, then. _And rash._  
She tried again: “I beg your pardon, I misunderstood. Please show me.”  
He nodded, and if her first reaction still puzzled him, he did not show it. He tilted his head in their intended direction – the path leading, eventually, to the Faron Bridge, and waited until she was at his side before he led the way deeper into the woods.  
They walked in silence. With most, the quiet was uncomfortable, soldiers and townspeople awed into silence in the presence of their ruler. With Link, Zelda was more inclined to believe he was simply not accustomed to conversation. For all she worried over what to do with him, his was, ultimately, an easy companionship.  
With only their footsteps and those of their horses to mark the time, they passed through the rest of the woods, traversed the rope-and-blank bridge in single file, and strode past what must have been Ordon Spring. The princess was trying to keep track of their path through the trees when Link spoke again:  
“I told Impa before I left. I want you to meet them.” He kept his eyes on the surroundings, always vigilant, but his posture was relaxed, unafraid. “I want them to meet you.”  
She did not need to ask who, not with their destination now clear. With the houses edging into view, pink against the green and grey of the valley, she could match the place with its name: Ordon Village. Link’s home.  
Link tied Epona’s reins to a stretch of fence and Zelda did the same with her own mount, the horse’s coat a distracting white amidst so many earthen tones. But the wood and the grass and the stream, in lazurite and emerald and tawny gold, found a mirror in Link’s gold-brown hair and clear blue eyes and worn green clothes. He had been born of this earth, this water, this sunlight, and every confident, comfortable line of his posture, the tiny curve of a smile at his mouth, reinforced the truth she already knew: this was where he fit, this was the place most suited to him.  
And as a brown-haired young woman came running with half-grown children at her heels, and as Link caught her and spun her in a circle, the both of them breathless with unbound joy and laughter, and as the children fastened themselves to his waist and legs in a tangle of affection, Zelda remembered with a pang that Link’s first loyalty had been to his family. Hyrule had been a second thought. The threat of Ganondorf had been a second thought.  
_Not to Hyrule. To you._  
Then the suffusion of enthusiasm was upon her, and while there were no over-affectionate embraces, she found her hand taken, then taken again, everyone taking their turn to pump her arm up and down, names fluttering from one mouth to the next-- “My name is Beth, this is Malo--” “I’m Malo--” “Talo--” “It’s my turn, Beth--” “This is Colin--” “Hi--” “I’m Ilia--”  
The flurry of names did not stop there. In the lengthening shadows of twilight, they progressed together, Zelda half a pace behind her guide, Link with a hand on her arm to keep her in the eye of the hurricane of his jovial friends. The adults filtered out of buildings one by one or in pairs, drawn by the noise, then drawn into Link’s crushing hugs. Sera and Hanch and Jaggle and Pergle and Russl and Uli (the greeting given her was somewhat gentler, the captain mindful of the baby in the woman’s arms), and Fado and Mayor Bo, who was built more like a boar than a man.  
And the zealous welcomes flooded over to include her, too, and princess or no, Uli gave her a one-armed hug, and there were more hands clasped around hers, one heartfelt “Pleased to meet you!” and “Welcome to Ordon!” after another.  
By the time the chaotic bundle of villagers and visitors (Link guiding her again through the tumult with a hand at her elbow) had settled like a flock of birds in front of the mayor’s house, Zelda could see why her captain was most often silent. In this small batch of humanity, there were more than enough voices to make up for his lack of one. Zelda had wondered, once, if he had been so quiet before, or if his time without a voice had left its mark on him. She need not wonder now.  
With a delighted, lopsided smile, Link absorbed all the news lavished upon him by his childhood family. Information about the goats – about the mayor’s most recent visit to the Gorons – about the state of Sera’s shop. Sitting in the middle of a puddle of his small admirers (the cat included) Link remained attentive. From somewhere (she’d missed where and when) a small calico cat had wound her way around Link’s waist and now lay purring in his lap.  
His eyes found hers at intervals, as if to gauge to what degree she was comfortable. She nodded each time, first formally, then with an increasingly reassuring smile as it became clear the conversation had momentum enough to go on all night. With him on one side and Uli on the other, each of them close enough for their knees to brush hers, and with the talk feathering over her pleasantly empty of politics, a sojourn from the castle looked more and more appealing. The Chosen Hero among people who loved him, adored him – the affection did him well, she could recognize that much. They were proud of him, immensely proud, but – as was not the case with the denizens of Castle Town – there was nothing innately unknowable about the Hero to those who had known him as a child. To them, he was Link, their Link. They had seen him into adulthood, and of all the amazing things he had done, growing up well was the most praise-worthy. And welcoming him back into their company after every absence was as high a praise as they could give.  
The sun sank lower and gradually disappeared altogether, and as most of the villagers had their children to put to bed, the numbers dwindled until only Rusl and Ilia remained. Rusl gave Link one last, fatherly pat on the shoulder before returning home, and Ilia moved with them to prepare the horses for their imminent departure.  
She had expected Ilia to assist with Epona, but the young woman cleaved to Zelda’s side instead, fingers brushing through the white courser’s mane with gentle reverence.  
“You’re just as quiet as he is,” she whispered, studying the princess out of the corner of one green eye. Her mouth turned up at the corners in a natural predisposition to smile. “If not more so.”  
“I hope I was not uncivil. I did not want to turn the focus of the conversation to me.”  
“You don’t have to apologize. Thank you for letting him visit.”  
Zelda checked the strap of the saddle, tightened the belt by a hands-width. “You could come with, you know. There’s room enough at the castle for the families of my guards.”  
“For the-- oh!” Ilia clapped a hand to her mouth. “No, I wouldn’t.” Her reply was stifled and soft-spoken besides, and Zelda had to lean closer to hear. “I’m-- I’m to be the next mayor, and I want a family, and I wouldn’t ask that of him. He’s not mine. Colin and the others – they’re children enough to him.”  
She intended to ask for clarification, but her captain was already astride Epona, and Zelda followed suit on her own mount as Ilia stepped back to leave Link with his own set of parting words.  
Night had fallen fully, but the light of the full moon left speckled paths for them to follow, its quicksilver light broken by the full branches overhead. Epona was the more surefooted of the two, and Zelda kept her horse a length behind until they had crossed the bridge and navigated the trickiest of the forest terrain.  
When the worn path widened, she moved to keep pace beside. “They are beautiful people.” The night had not been quiet, not with the cacophony of frogs in the reeds or the crickets in the bushes, but her voice still sounded loud and otherworldly. “You love them very much.”  
A nod was his reply, deep and honest, but nothing else.  
“Would you like to live there still?”  
“They don’t need me.”  
He was illuminated well enough by the moon, but the light cast strange shadows across his face, and his expression – usually a giveaway to his mood – was inscrutable. Regret? Resolve?  
“Princess.” He lifted his chin, moonlight caught in the planes of his face. “Were _you_ afraid?”  
The question, though soft, startled her all the same. She did not realize how warm and comfortable the night had been until old haunts traced a chill across her shoulders.  
“Sometimes.”  
He made no reply, only waited. If she wanted, she could change the subject, or simply not reply at all. Perhaps it was that freedom to choose, or the silence, or even his unerring focus, but she found the words unspooling, drawn up from where she’d left them buried.  
“There were spiders in the throne room.” She could see them again – faceless heads, knobby fingers. Her guards dead before they could fight. Zant and the dead, bulbous eyes of his mask. “We fell. I lost them. I lost everyone. We had so little warning and then everything… everyone was gone.”  
“But,” he whispered, insistent, “you kept going.”  
She did not want to be so shaken, but she was grateful for the same shadows that so shrouded her captain. A queen did not cry in the presence of her subjects. “If dying would have saved them, I-- I would have done it. I would have done anything. But it wasn’t-- it wasn’t enough.”  
“You love them very much.”  
“For all the good that did them.” _Surrender or die._ “I will not-- I will _not_ let it happen again.”  
She could not see as well as she would have liked, and the only warning she had of Link’s movement was the nudge of his knee against hers as he steered Epona shoulder-to-shoulder with the courser. Her horse did not flinch, and neither did she, and when he pulled off one gauntlet and turned up his palm in the air between them, she loosened her right hand from the reins and took the offer. His hand was warm from the glove, careful as he threaded his fingers through hers, unflinching when she tightened her grip for a hope of steadiness.  
Impa rode out to meet them partway and found them crossing Hyrule Field, left hand and right hand still laced together. Not until they reached the castle walls did the princess finally loosen her hold and take back her hand in silent retreat.

\----

While the letter to Prince Ralis would, in time, be one she replied to, those from Shad (who wrote on Ashei’s behalf, as she had no patience for correspondence) and Talma were unscheduled missives less for formality than for sharing whatever information the senders thought important. Shad’s letters were mostly excited, scribbled notes on whatever lost wonder he and his team were presently exploring; Telma’s had a more immediate relevancy to them, detailing news from Castle Town, but Zelda always had the sense that Telma was, for reasons unknown, winking at her with an impish familiarity from between the handwritten lines.  
But these weren’t enough. She needed more eyes in the fields, in the crowds, in the forests. Two candles were not enough to illuminate the whole of Hyrule. Even a wandering spark would help.  
For perhaps the fourth time that morning, shapes beyond her window drew her gaze. No arms practice had been scheduled, but in their absence, Impa had determined to test the extent of the new captain’s abilities. As far as Zelda could tell, they had been sparring on and off since breakfast – Link light on his toes, Impa sure of her movements and as strong as an Ordon ram.  
Castle Town was in good hands. Between Talma and the guards posted along the winding streets, no creeping darkness would enter the capital without its progress being checked throughout. Shad and Ashei, wherever they wandered, swept away the danger of the unknown. But what of the places between? The fields and forests and tumbling wilds were pocketed throughout with Bulbins and Poes and Bokoblins. Travel was dangerous. Diplomacy was dangerous: the postman took his job very seriously, but his life was at risk every time he wound his way up Death Mountain to trade letters with the Gorons.  
With a precision that suggested he’d done the same many times before, Link parried a blow, shoved his forearm against Impa’s sternum to knock her off balance, and vaulted backward in smooth avoidance of her unsteady retaliation. Of the two, Impa was taller and heavier with muscle, and Zelda knew from lessons just how heavy her blows even in practice could be. Link did well to keep his distance.  
His eyes flickered up to her window, and as soon as they snagged on her, he looked away, looked down, looked anywhere but at her window again. As before, his stance became sloppy, his movements clumsy, even as he tried to rally in preparation for his opponent’s continued assault.  
His new clumsiness did not go unnoticed: Impa spoke – her tone teasing, judging from the cant of her stance – and Zelda watched her captain color, pink seeping from ears to nose.  
Would it always be so? How many more days could go by this way, with him fighting to keep pace in a position not suited for him? How long could he struggle against this place when he sought succor as often as he could, as far away as he could reasonably go? How could she keep him tethered here when her presence was a complication in every way?  
She turned away from the window to focus again on her desk, on the missives littered across its surface. She could not, truly, claim that he was the only one at risk of making the arrangement complicated.

\----

“He is distracted, Princess.”  
“I know, Impa.”  
“I could have broken his nose this morning and he would not even have noticed.”  
“I know, Impa.” Emphatic but not annoyed, Zelda set her teacup back into its saucer. “He wants to stay.”  
Across from her, Impa shrugged. “Then let him stay.”  
“The guards have complained. Not about him, precisely, only his methods. He does not know how to instruct. He is not accustomed to authority. He does not seem to want it.”  
Her bodyguard spun an empty teacup on the tablecloth, her hands nearly dwarfing the porcelain. “What would you have him do instead?”  
Had she an answer, she would have given it, but the princess only rocked her head back against the tall cushion of her chair. “I wonder, these days,” she began, eyes closed, “if all the wisdom I was granted by the Goddess has faded. Or perhaps I have never been wise at all, only lucky.”  
“You think you were unwisely given Wisdom?”  
Her thumb found the back of her right hand. “I think I was chosen because I had influence from birth. What good is wisdom without the power to share it?”  
“What good is wisdom without the courage to speak it?”  
She opened one eye to study her bodyguard, but Impa wore no smile. She was not teasing.  
“In the pyramid,” Impa went on, “Power is at the apex for a reason. Wisdom and Courage are the basis for Power: without either, Power has no foundation to keep it grounded or in perspective. It grows out of control. It grows into a weed.”  
“But Courage untempered and Wisdom untempered are just as dangerous,” Zelda added, finishing the lecture heard from childhood. “The Triforce is most stable when combined or when contained within those of the earth. Mortals cannot embody any of the three in their purity.”  
“So wisdom in all things at all times defeats the purpose of a mortal host.”  
“But Impa, this is not all things.” With unbound frustration, then, Zelda raised her hands to her face and fought back a sigh. “This is one man who has earned rest more than any of us. I owe him happiness and I owe him peace.”  
Her bodyguard coughed a laugh. “Princess, you have been somber since you were six years old. And even were you otherwise, I would be leery of defining another’s happiness. If you need to know what he wants, then ask him.”  
“Impa--”  
“ _And_ ,” the Sheikah continued, “you can observe people all you want, Princess, but don’t forget that they might be watching you right back.” 

\----

She had not sought him out since the Ordon visit half a week ago, but his habits had not changed. After an hour of afternoon searching, she found him outside, propped against the open door to the kitchens. The head cook’s cat had given birth to kittens, apparently, for her captain had his lap full of mewling balls of fur. Their mother lay in a patch of sunlight overlapping his knee, and Zelda could hear her purrs even before she sat down.  
As full of purpose as she had been in seeking him, she couldn’t bring herself now to disrupt the peace; she sat at his shoulder and watched in unbroken silence as tiny claws dragged at her captain’s shirt and small calico bodies scrambled up to his shoulders. As much as he tried to be as stoic as she was, the kittens’ tongues scratching at his chin brought reluctant laughter bubbling out of him like the first snowmelt streams of spring.  
He was, she supposed upon closer inspection, handsome in a quiet, sharp sort of way. Certainly he wasn’t as gorgeous as the young women of Castle Town claimed, but perhaps his fame had, for some, added to the allure.  
“I am--” He flinched as a small, wet nose collided with the edge of his mouth, tilted his head away, tried again: “I am at your service, Princess.”  
“You seem indisposed.”  
“Never.” At her sobriety, he likewise settled, bright-eyed and focused.  
This time, there was no midnight darkness to hide behind, nor solitude to stretch the silence between words. And yet, as before, Zelda found words unknotted, rethreaded: “I want you to stay.” She kept her eyes on the rolling expanse of the castle grounds – not on him. “But I think you know that already.”  
He shrugged, and perhaps the gesture was meant to be noncommittal, but her instinct was that he had not, in fact, known she thought so, and for him to openly admit as much would send her admissions off course.  
“But you have done so much for us, for Hyrule. I owe you so much more than… than this.”  
“‘This’?”  
“A flock of guards you don’t know what to do with and a home you retreat from whenever possible.”  
“You do not owe me anything, Princess.”  
She pretended not to notice the new tenderness in his voice. “You saved us – all of us. We asked so much of you.”  
“Hyrule is my home, too.”  
Zelda looked at him, then, at last. His forehead was creased, his mouth a thin and serious line, his eyes as fierce as they had been at the end, at the last stand against Ganondorf. And she saw the look again, a lifetime ago: the winded determination in those blue eyes when he’d carried an ailing Midna to her.  
Unbidden, she recalled the easy freedom with which he had swept Ilia into his arms. The mayhem of an embrace from all of Ordon’s fast-growing children. Other flashes, too, pieces of memory from a time when her soul had been tangled with Midna’s: rescuing Colin, Ilia’s amnesia, Prince Ralis’s illness, the Yetis on Snowpeak.  
He hadn’t fought for a cause or a kingdom or for the joy of combat itself. He fought for one person, then another, and another until the fight was so much bigger than himself, so much bigger than anything he had expected to be a part of, that in the end, he fought for everyone in a single blow, and had he fallen, all those he loved would have fallen too. He risked his life for people – one after the other after the other.  
“You care deeply.” The words rang empty in the face of so much devotion, but she spoke them anyway. “You love them – all of them – everyone you’ve met.”  
“So do you.” His voice was low, a whisper. “You have so many to look after, but you would give – have given – your life for just one.”  
Blood rushed into her ears, drowning out everything but the echo of Impa’s earlier words. All this time, she’d been studying him and seeking his heart, and here it was, written in his eyes and in his actions and in the path of his journey itself.  
All the love she’d seen in him, he’d seen in her from the beginning.  
“My life is yours,” he said again, as earnestly as in the throne room, and Zelda did not, this time, doubt for a moment what he meant.

\----

Even gathered all together, her staff seemed piteously small in the grand sweep of the throne room. The guards, like chicks, clustered together half at attention, half too close to one another to be truly ranked like soldiers. Zelda felt a pang of affection for them, for their too-big uniforms and the untempered energy that carried them through training exercises that they had not yet mastered. The servants, dressed in loose and flowing whites and greens, were far more regal, far steadier in the rows they made along the opposite side of the room.  
Small victories kept at bay the larger darkness they had all passed through, and for now, with her household a shadow of its former glory, she brought them all together to celebrate any change in rank.  
Link and Impa stood side by side on the narrow band of blue velvet: Impa with her chin high, her shoulders back; Link with an upright military bearing and a mild frown of concentration. _Don’t worry,_ she had promised him before ushering him into the room, _I will do the talking._  
“This ceremony will be brief.” She did not need to shout to be heard, and the silence settled like a layer of dust over those gathered. “Your time is valuable, and I call you away from your duties only to present to you two of Hyrule’s faithful servants. Their service merits a change in title, and these two before me have earned every right to their new positions.  
“Impa.”  
The bodyguard knelt.  
“You have been my guardian since birth. Your defense of me and of the castle has been unwavering, and you have advised me wisely on all matters.”  
“My life is yours, Princess.”  
Princess Zelda stepped from the dais of the throne, touched one hand to Impa’s shoulder and the other on the top of her bowed head. “Impa. I hereby pronounce you Captain of the Guard.”  
A rustle went up from the guards – surprise and disbelief. Impa, who had known of the impending change, remained impassive. Link, to the best of his ability, did the same, but Zelda could see plainly enough the shock of the pronouncement. She had not warned him – had known he would protest the change.  
But as Impa rose, newly-knighted, Link squared his shoulders, shackled though he was by the weight of his disappointment.  
“Link.”  
Uncertain, as hesitant now as he had been as a teacher, he knelt.  
“Your deeds need no recounting. We know them by heart. We will share them with our descendants for years to come, and where the details may fade, your spirit will be impressed upon us as legend for every age hereafter.”  
His ears colored, but he kept his head bowed, his eyes on her feet.  
“I know you do not seek gratitude for what you have done. Your selflessness is perhaps part of what inspires such courage in you. But the truth remains that you are our Chosen Hero. Hyrule is yours, as much as it is mine, and as its sentinels, we must tend to its remote corners as much as the city at its heart. With courage and with wisdom, we must take care of all we so deeply love.  
“For you, there is no title I can give that does not do full justice to who you are and what you have done. For you, I give you back what you once had: your freedom to roam, to explore, to come and go from this place as you please.”  
She watched him, his shoulders straightening, as understanding caught up with her words.  
“I must attend to my people from here, with an eye to the grand scheme. I ask that you attend to people as one of their own, as someone who seeks to help those he sees, no matter the scale of their difficulty.  
“I appoint you my emissary of peace, of goodwill, of brotherhood. Wherever you go, you go as the knight of the royal family. All that you do, whether they be tasks great or small, you do in my name.”  
“I am honored to serve you, Princess.”  
“And I am honored to have you at my side.” She touched a hand to his shoulder and another to his chin, touching the curve of his jaw with the edge of her thumb. “Link.” To hushed whispers from the ranks of soldiers and servants, she lifted his face; despite the new angle, he kept his eyes downcast with an obvious force of will.”  
“Link. I hereby pronounce you the Queen’s Emissary.” Sealing the pronouncement, she pressed a kiss against his forehead.  
Even now, for all the susurrations of those gathered, she did not need to raise her voice as she stepped back. “You may be dismissed. Carry on your new duties with all the courage and skill you have thus far shown me you possess.”  
Impa and Link rose in the same movement, the Sheikah moving at once to direct her new flock to the training grounds for remedial lessons. But her new knight rose only, it seemed, to stand where he had been placed for the ceremony. She had not retreated a distance of any merit, and for a moment, they stood eye-to-eye, the crown of his head a partial hand-span below her own.  
“I was mistaken in trapping you here,” she admitted, as the chatter of departing servants and soldiers preserved their conversation from outside ears. “I give you back what I should never have taken from you: your self.”  
His only reply was to rock forward one more step, to rise partway up onto his toes, and to leave against her mouth the brush of a kiss, feather-light.  
And then he retreated, and strode from the room with the last of the others, and Zelda stood alone in the throne room with the ghost of his smile against her own.


End file.
